Ubuntu is a Linux operating system for PC, tablets and smartphones. It is like Windows or Mac OS Sierra but comes but a beautiful layout and features and games such as some pre-installed softwares like LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and several lightweight games such as Sudoku and chess.

Here I’m going to show you how you can easily add weather information to the system tray by installing Simple weather Indicator or My weather Indicator. System tray is usually present on the top of the screen in the Ubuntu which has the time, settings and volume options and other added software icons.

When users are looking for weather applications or widgets they are usually looking just for the current temperatures and the forecast which will be provided by the both these tools. These tools also give some other information like when will be the sunrise or sunset or information about wind, pressure, humidity etc.

How to Install My Weather Indicator with Desktop Widget in Ubuntu

SIMPLE WEATHER INDICATOR

The Simple Weather Indicator is a tool for Ubuntu Unity as well as Gnome3 that detects the user’s location and shows the current temperature with the weather condition. This tools is written in Python and uses IP-API.com and Open Weather Map services.

You can install this applet by two ways. First, by simply entering and running the following commands on the pre installed Python command line version or the terminal ( Ctrl+Alt+T)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kasra-mp/ubuntu-indicator-weather

sudoapt-get update

sudoapt-get install indicator-weather

After these commands are entered and executed the weather indicator applet will be installed and usable. When the tool is launched by opening it through the Unity Dash and adding the certain preferences according to the user it will appear in the system tray showing just the current temperature and just beside it will be an image or an icon showing the current weather condition outside, for example sunny or cloudy etc. If you click on it and choose the preferences option a settings box will open containing certain options like if you want automatic weather location or you want to enter the longitude and the latitude etc.

Another way is by downloading the .deb package from the link given below and simply running it and after the next few steps

Then click install the package with Ubuntu Software, and finally launch it from Unity Dash.

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter command

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kasra-mp/ubuntu-indicator-weather

You can get regular updates or upgrades from the Software Updater itself run the following command

sudo apt update && sudo apt install indicator-weather

Uninstall:

To remove the applet, simply run following command in the terminal:

sudo apt remove indicator-weather

My Weather Indicator

So these were two methods of how you can add the weather information to the system tray by the Simple weather Indicator. Now we will look at another applet My weather Indicator.

Just like the previous one this displays current temperature and conditions on the Unity panel, but this one also has a menu stuffed full of stats, including ‘feels like’, cloudiness and sunrise/sunset times. Also, there’s a desktop widget, multiple location support, and with a plenty of configuration settings opton present.

My Weather Indicator is not quite available to install from the Ubuntu Software Center directly. A .deb installer, and a PPA (providing packages for Ubuntu 16.04.1) is given by the development team and it’s link is given below. A Personal Package Archive or a PPA is a software repository for uploading source packages to be built and published as an Advanced Packaging Tool repository by Launchpad. Click on the following link to download the required files:

And also to make sure that you automatically receive the regular updates we have to add some similar command lines in the terminal(Unity Dash>Terminal or Ctrl+Alt+T) as given below

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator

Now the user has the applet installed properly and has to set it up. So first, just simply search the app’s name or just “weather” in the Unity Dash and open it. When we open it for the first time the first thing that appears is the preferences page.

Here you can choose the location and whether you want a widget or not or if you want it to display temperature or weather conditions on the system tray. The widget too has some beautiful and different skins or layouts.

Unlike the previous one this app for its forecast gets its data from Open Weather Map by default. You can change the source from the Weather Source pane and choose from these

Open Weather Map

Yahoo! Weather

Weather Underground

World Weather Online

In the units tab you can set your preferred measurements for temperature like C or F, pressure, wind speed, etc. All configured locations follows these preferences, i.e. you can’t have one place in Celsius and another in Fahrenheit. Finally, in the ‘General Options‘ section you can select the refresh the interval, set auto-start preference and choose from one of the two panel icons.

These were some of the ways in which you can add the weather information in the system tray on your Ubuntu OS. If you just want a widget on your desktop you can even try the Typhoon weather widget or you can find the widget in the Simple weather indicator and My weather indicator too.